"My personal favorite from Jim Jarmusch, one of our finest American auteurs. If as filmmakers we’re all just laboriously trying to simulate the rush of texture and emotion you get from listening to great music, no one has ever come closer to smacking the heart of a Tom Waits tune up there on the screen than Jarmusch."

"Highly influential western by Jim Jarmusch with gorgeous black-and-white cinematography and a haunting, minimalist electric guitar score by Neil Young. All these ingredients make this one of my all-time favorites. "

"When I was seventeen, I dressed like John Lurie and Tom Waits in Down by Law. They were the apex of cool in my book. This is my favorite Jim Jarmusch movie. The “I scream. You scream. We all scream for ice cream” scene is classic."

"One of my favorite films from Jim Jarmusch; I can never get enough of it. Beautifully shot by Robby Müller in Louisiana, a jailbreak with Tom Waits, John Lurie, and the first time many of us were to see the amazing Roberto Benigni. The Defiant Ones meets the Marx Brothers and even better. Jim is one of the last true stylists left in this “sad and beautiful world.”"

"Off the top of my head I’ll say Down by Law, the Jim Jarmusch movie with Tom Waits and John Lurie and Roberto Benigni. It just has sort of a weird sense of humour and it’s a bit of a road movie itself. It’s original in a really cool way."

"Jim Jarmusch is the finest director at making you feel the energy of different countries. Here, he gets a great opportunity to do that, as he tells the story of five taxi drivers working different night shifts around the world. A young Winona Ryder is dwarfed in her driver’s seat; Roberto Benigni shines."

"I love pretty much everything Jarmusch does, and Down by Law is as good an introduction to his work as any of his many wonderful films. Now that I think about it, be sure to also check out Mystery Train and Night on Earth, probably before watching Down by Law because they’re a bit more accessible. Then come back to Down by Law and watch it again, and see how it gets better each time, and how you want to relive it like a nice dream. The world of Jim Jarmusch is a truly wonderful place, like a little corner café for cinema lovers to spend their days in. Bonus: Roberto Benigni is just incredibly delightful in Jarmusch films. Hey, Criterion, can we get a nice Ghost Dog set?"

"Jim Jarmusch film. So wonderfully done in black and white. John Lurie stars and does the music. It’s weird because there are no close ups in the film, it’s an objective viewing experience, and yet it’s subjective in the way that Jarmusch points you. You’re given anything to look at, but you’re always looking at the right things. And the idea that it began as a short, just called The New World, but they raised money to make the other two or three acts, is really interesting to me. Great performances, a lot of humor, really slow pace. These were things I wasn’t really used to — the European pace, even though I love The 400 Blows, it was a revelation at the time in 1984. And I saw it when it came out in Austin, and just I think it opened up a new world of storytelling and filmmaking to me on some level."

"No one’s been more encouraging of Screen Slate than Richard Hell, who saved its hide more than he realizes and promoted it with a missionary zeal. The first time we spoke we met at the late Café Orlin, the site of one of his most memorable scenes in the film, and then one of the last vestiges of the city that Smithereens portrays. I could have died. Smithereens was the first American indie to compete for the Palme d’Or, and it presages that whole wave we popularly associate with Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, and so on. I know life isn’t a competition, but this is the best of those debuts. And when you consider Susan Seidelman alongside Allison Anders, Sara Driver, Penelope Spheeris, Lizzie Borden, Kathleen Collins, and Joel DeMott, among so many others, women really slayed in the American indie ’80s."